


Breath of Your Last Cigarette

by sameboots



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 02:57:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13515225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sameboots/pseuds/sameboots
Summary: " She knows that if she tucks her nose into his neck, near the beginnings of his hairline, he’ll smell a little like his animagus form, a hint of puppy in the curl of his perspiration." Sirius/Lily, but really Marauders background orgy





	Breath of Your Last Cigarette

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2010 for a ficathon on LiveJournal. I was young and filled with purple prose.

Lily finds him where he usually is when he’s without his pack; she doesn’t know if Remus and James don’t know he comes here, or if -- more likely -- they know he does it when he needs to be alone. But she is neither brother nor lover nor blood, and she doesn’t leave him alone just because he’s tucked tail. 

He glances up at her, the moonlight always seeming brighter than normal against the dark, unwashed stones of an abandoned turret. The end of his cigarette flares with the deep drag he pulls from it, holding the smoke in his lungs so his chest puffs out, his eyes narrowing. She folds her arms across her chest, her spine straightening just so. The stream of smoking drifts from his lips, curling and carrying away with the wind. 

“Blossom,” he acknowledges her, a nod of his head, his black hair shaggy enough to fall across his forehead. 

“Mongrel,” she says, but there’s affection in each syllable, and the tension in her muscles begins to query if it can lessen. 

“James’ll be looking for you,” he says, idly tapping the cigarette against a window sill, ashes fluttering to the ground far below. 

She shrugs her shoulders, unfolding and leaning on the other side of the window, cold stone a harsh bite against her hip. “You, me, Remus, Peter, he’s always tracking someone down. The moon is full, he’s probably got his mind on something else.”

She waits for the twitch and flutter, the sharpening of his jaw when she mentions it. She wonders if anyone else realizes exactly why he surrounds himself with cold air and stamped out cigarette butts on these nights. It must be easier, being surrounded by boys, who desire simplicity and ignorance.

Lily holds out her fingers, the silent request a familiar one, and he begrudgingly passes the cigarette to her. She pulls the acrid, burnt paper taste into her mouth, the absent heat of it still unfamiliar. 

“He’ll smell it on you,” Sirius says, still watching her with a hint of uncertainty.

She releases the stream of grey to the night. “Do you think I don’t smell it on him?” She asks with a quirk of an eyebrow.

It seems to quell him, so she takes another drag and hands it back, curling her dry tongue back on itself.

“You can have your own,” he offers, reaching for the pack. She shrugs. That’s not really the point, and she thinks he realizes it on some level.

He finishes it while she watches the moonlight on the lake, and it’s too cold to be out here, but she’s too stubborn to leave. And there’s something, something to being out here with him, the two of them. The five of them, none of them, are ever alone, it always seems a group. Even with James, they’re usually tucked into each other while Sirius, Remus, or Peter (or all three) sits across from them, and James shares himself with four people not one. She doesn’t mind, doesn’t pretend she didn’t realize what the reality was before she embarked on it. But there’s an intimacy she craves, a quiet desire for these moments shared alone and silent with another person.

He drops the butt to the ground, pressing it beneath the toe of his boot, the movement slipping him closer to her, until she can smell him: the lingering petrol from his motorcycle, butterbeer and tobacco on his breath, the hint of worn leather. She knows that if she tucks her nose into his neck, near the beginnings of his hairline, he’ll smell a little like his animagus form, a hint of puppy in the curl of his perspiration.

Sirius lifts a hand and curls it around her neck, hot and callused on the thin skin of her throat. When he leans in and kisses her, it’s not unexpected, it’s not shocking, it’s just Sirius. Warm, a little scratchy, dry and smoky. She kisses him back, because there’s not a part of her in denial about what he and James are, what he and Remus are, what they all somehow are, in their woven web of love and trust. Because kissing him is an extension of James, and even if it’s wrong, it’s intrinsically right.


End file.
